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Saturday, April 12, 2014

If ever I receive a free copy of a book (whether solicited
or unsolicited), I’m pretty scrupulous about disclosing the fact in my review
of it but I don’t necessarily make a point of disclosing right at the beginning
of the post. I do feel, however, that
with The Gift of Darkness, V.M. Giambanco’s
debut thriller, I should be very open about the fact that Mrs Falaise knows the
author, that the author and I have been known to communicate on Twitter and that
my copy of the book was given to me by her.

Given this, I was actually half-hoping that there would be
some flaw in it that would enable me to hand down some righteous constructive
criticism and, thereafter, point to it to demonstrate my simon-pure
character. Unfortunately Ms Giambanco
has signally failed to oblige and has delivered an excellent police procedural which
promises to be the first of many.

Detective Alice Madison has only been on the Seattle Police
Department Homicide squad for five weeks when she and her partner, Sergeant
Brown, are called to a crime scene. It’s
not pleasant. Inside, an entire family
has been murdered, the father being forced to watch his wife and two young children
being shot. Each of them has been
blindfolded and a cross drawn on their foreheads in blood. The words, “Thirteen Days”, have been scrawled
on the wall of the bedroom, also in blood.

The father, James Sinclair, is also a survivor of the Hoh
River kidnapping 25 years earlier, in which he and two other boys had been
kidnapped. Only two of them survived – Sinclair
and John Cameron, a man now wanted for numerous murders. There are sufficient clues at the scene to
make it a seemingly open and shut case but Madison and Brown soon begin to have
doubts.

It does need to be acknowledged that The Gift of Darkness is a doorstopper of a book, clocking in at a
touch over 500 pages and around 143,000 words.
It is sufficiently heavy to have made it an uncomfortable read on the
Tube but the length allows Ms Giambanco to fill in the back stories of the main
characters and to set the plot up in detail.

Arguably, the first half or so of the book could have been pruned a
little as Ms Giambanco gives highly detailed scene descriptions, probably due
to her background in the film industry - but which could have left more to the
reader’s imagination – and the nature of the police procedural sub-genre. Having said that, I quite enjoy seeing a
satisfying plot reveal itself little by little and it certainly allows for a steady
increase in tempo as the story builds to its climax as well as a gradual ratcheting
up of the tension.

Many of the tropes of the genre appear in The Gift of Darkness and it’s much to Ms
Giambanco’s credit that she stops well short of falling into cliché territory –
in fact at one point I groaned as she dangled a classic genre plot device that made
me (a lifelong half-wit at guessing the identity of the killer) think both that
I’d spotted the murderer very early on and that the book was about to become
quite dull. Foolish me, as it became
apparent shortly after that my guess couldn’t possibly have been correct. What the reader actually does get is some interesting
twists on the tropes she uses and a story that flows naturally from whodunit
into whydunit and keeps firm hold of the reader’s interest by some ingenious
plot devices and hooks.

Aside from the plotting, Ms Giambanco’s main strength appears
to be in characterisation. The central
protagonists all have rich back stories and are satisfyingly nuanced – there are
no cardboard cut-outs or characteristics dressed as characters here – although I
would say that Ms Giambanco is better at bad guys – they tend to the cold and
creepy and John Cameron, in particular, is one of the more intriguing villains
I’ve come across recently.

It’s also noteworthy that the large cast of detectives,
crime scene technicians and prosecutors are also drawn so as to give them
individuality and the promise of development into a real ensemble in the
future. Holding it all together is
Madison, a gutsy and determined cop, and her relationship with her partner and
mentor, Brown.

I don’t suppose The
Gift of Darkness will convert non-crime fiction fans but it’s a highly
accomplished debut that I thoroughly enjoyed and would unhesitatingly recommend
(unless you’re a fan of “cozies” who struggles with anything darker.

Madison and Brown have all the hallmarks of series
protagonists and there is a pretty elephantine unresolved issue at the end of The Gift of Darkness that practically
screams for at least one sequel and probably more so I hope that Ms Giambanco’s
publishers do the decent thing and sign her up for more – I for one will happily
blow the cobwebs from my wallet and shell out for more of this.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

I feel as if I should open this post with a caveat, as a
sort of health warning for anyone who may feel an inexplicable urge to treat my
opinion as something worth paying attention to.
If you remember, in July 2010, The
Times, Caitlin Moran’s employer, decided to erect a paywall to prevent
non-subscribers (such as me) from accessing its online coverage. I was outraged and swore an oath of utmost
fearsomeness that I would never, ever be prepared to pay to read a newspaper
online and that henceforth The Times would
be a stranger to me (unless I found a copy on the Tube or in the loo at work).

Well, that lasted all of a fortnight or so before I
grumbling input my debit card details and signed up for an online
subscription. It wasn’t for the news;
after all I can get that anywhere. No,
it was for the columnists and the features and, if I’m being totally honest,
for Simon Barnes and Caitlin Moran. Put
simply, I valued the enjoyment I get from reading their pieces enough to plonk
down cash on a regular basis.

And so, it will come as no surprise that I thoroughly
enjoyed Moranthology which, as its
name suggests is a collection of some of her Times columns. In fact, I
enjoyed it more than I expected as I would have already read most of the pieces
when they first appeared in the paper.

My favourite Moran columns tend to be those that deal with
popular culture where she takes a subject and then riffs on it in a deceptively
effortless and hilarious fashion. I’m
also a big fan of her imagined late night conversations with her long-suffering
husband, rock critic Peter Paphides (himself a highly talented journalist).

Indeed, if that was her limit, that would be sufficient but,
in addition she is an excellent interviewer as shown in this collection in
pieces about Keith Richards and a manically wonderful trip to a sex club with
Lady Gaga. These pieces are almost worth
the price of the book on their own.

And there’s yet more.
Over the years, Ms Moran has become more confident and vocal about
speaking out on social issues, often linking them back to her own childhood in
the West Midlands. In this book, there
are serious pieces on benefits cuts, the closure of libraries and the nature of
poverty. I can’t say that I always agree
with her views but they are expressed here clearly, cogently and persuasively.

I believe that good humorous writing comes across as apparently
effortless but needs huge skill from the author and I’d hold Ms Moran’s serious
pieces up as evidence of her talent. As
well as the columns I’ve mentioned above, her obituaries of Elizabeth Taylor
and Amy Winehouse are poignant and deeply moving and demonstrate real quality.

Although I’m not entirely sure that Caitlin Moran would approve
of me, I’m a huge fan as you may have guessed by now. In summary, she’s funny, bright and a deceptively
serious social critic and I can do no better than to urge you to go out and buy
this book (or borrow it from the library!).
You really won’t regret it.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

When I come across a crime series I enjoy, there’s a certain
pattern to my reading. At first, I
devour instalments one after another until I’ve eventually caught up with the
author. After that, there’s usually one
or possibly two instalments that are due out shortly after I’ve caught up and
then, finally, I slip into a tormented pattern of longing for the next one to
be published and cursing any diversion by the author into writing books that
don’t form part of the series.

And so it has been for a long time with Donna Leon’s
Brunetti series. I eagerly anticipate
each new book and pre-order them so as to get my grubby mitts on them as soon
as possible. Recently, however, I’ve
noticed a certain unevenness in the series, with some episodes seeming a little
lacklustre.

I would guess that part of this is down to the sheer
longevity of the series. With a central
cast that rarely changes (the rise in prominence of officers Pucetti and
Griffoni being the only additions of recent note), there’s a limit as to how
fresh the books can be and, if truth be told, I do appreciate the familiarity
that long acquaintance brings. One of
Leon’s hallmarks is the centrality of Brunetti’s family life to the stories and
so the regular passages set around the dinner table or in their living room are
very much like settling into an old pair of slippers - comforting and to be
luxuriated in.

The other “Leon factor” if you like is her concern with the
social and political issues Italy, and Venice in particular, is faced
with. At her best, Leon brings these out
and debates them by means of plot elements, subtle dialogue and background
cameo scenes. At her worst (and, I
suspect, most enraged) they end up being either a little bit ranty or
thumpingly didactic.

By Its Cover, the
23rd Brunetti novel, sits somewhere towards the better end of the
Leon range. At its beginning, Comissario
Guido Brunetti of the Venice police is contemplating the onset of spring whilst
dealing with an altercation between two water tax drivers. He is interrupted by a phone call requesting
his presence at the Biblioteca Merula, where it soon becomes clear that a thief
has been at work, stealing valuable works and even cutting pages out of other
rare volumes. Suspicion soon falls on an
American researcher who has been working at the library, although Brunetti is
also intrigued by the library’s other regular, a former priest known as
Tertullian for his apparent love for the writings of the fathers of the Church.

Inspired by the ongoing Italian problem with art theft and
by the massive theft of books from the Girolamini Library in Naples by its own
director in 2012, By Its Cover is
likely to engage any book lover, as well as crime fiction fans. Leon uses the novel to explore not only her
customary themes of Italian bureaucracy and institutional corruption but more
esoteric issues that will probably only engage book lovers, such as whether
books are valuable for themselves as objects or for the texts that they
carry. For the record, I, like Guido, am
on Team Text - although a particular book may have an extrinsic value through
its production or its historicity, ultimately, the book only exists as a means
to transport the text to the reader.

Over the years, Leon’s books have moved from pure detective
stories to explorations of social issues using the form of the detective story
as the structure within which to do so.
She has also given the city of Venice itself and the personal lives of
Brunetti and his circle increased prominence to the extent that there is no
murder (and, like it or not, murder is the overwhelming raison d’etre of almost
all crime fiction) until halfway through the book.

It’s mainly for this reason that I would recommend new
readers to begin at the beginning with Death
at La Fenice and carry on through. The
existing fan can be assured that this is an excellent entry in the Brunetti
series, albeit one with a lightly abrupt and unusually loose ending. There are few detectives with whom I enjoy
spending time more and I must now endure the long wait for Leon’s next book.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

A Man Without Breath
is the ninth outing for Philip Kerr’s stained white knight, Bernie Gunther, and
is closer in spirit to the darker, more morally ambiguous Field Grey than to the enjoyable but lighter detective story of Prague Fatale.

The story opens a few short months after the German
disaster at Stalingrad and, yet again, Bernie has got himself a new job. This time, although retaining his rank in the
SD (the security branch of the SS), he is working for the War Crimes Bureau of
the Wehrmacht which is, in essence, a German effort to portray itself in a better
light by investigating alleged Allied war crimes. Staffed by former Prussian judges, it is a
small anti-Nazi enclave within the German armed forces and a place where Bernie
first comes into contact with a small group of aristocratic army officers
plotting to assassinate Hitler.

Being at a loose end following the collapse of his
investigation into the alleged British sinking of a German hospital ship, as a result
of the principal witness dying in an RAF air raid on Berlin, Bernie finds
himself packed off to Smolensk in Russia to investigate claims that a large
number of Polish army officers had been killed by the Russians in a nearby forest;
a place called Katyn. If such a thing
could be proved, not only would it be a boon for German propaganda, but it could
also be used to drive a wedge between the Soviet Union and its Western
allies. As such, Bernie finds himself
uncomfortably backed by Josef Goebbels himself.

Unfortunately for Bernie, he finds himself stuck in
Smolensk at the end of winter and the ground is too hard to begin digging at
the suspected mass grave. Indeed, it’s
doubly unfortunate both because Russia in 1943 is a pretty unsafe place for a
German but also because he happens to be the nearest thing to a detective
available when two members of a German signals regiment are found with their throats
slit. For Bernie, life becomes more
uncomfortable still as his own inimitable brand of investigation soon garners
him a number of enemies, including Field Marshall Günther von Kluge, the
local German commander who wields almost unfettered power in his theatre of
operations.

If one were to group together books like Philip Kerr’s
Bernie Gunther novels, Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko series, Sam Eastland’s
Inspector Pekkala books, William Ryan’s Alexei Korolev stories and Rebecca
Pawel’s Carlos Tejada works, there appears to be identifiable a sub-genre of
detective stories featuring honest detectives trying to do their best to seek
justice against the background of repressive and corrupt regimes. Gunther is typical of this, ideologically
opposed to the Nazis but forced to operate within the state’s machinery, trying
to remain as uncompromised as possible in an environment that corrupts or
breaks all whom it touches.

Kerr is adept at drawing out some of the insanities of the
Nazi outlook. At one point, Bernie notes
the lunacy of investigating and hanging two German soldiers for rape and murder
of two Russian peasants when only a few miles away, an SS einsatzgruppen has just murdered 25,000 Russian Jews. He also doubts whether publicising the Katyn
massacre of 4,000 Poles is really going to deflect attention from the mass
killings of Jews in Eastern Europe by the German forces.

As always, Kerr’s knowledge of the period and its
personalities is exemplary. One of the
joys of a Bernie Gunther novel is the appearance of actual politicians and
soldiers of the time, in this instance ranging from Josef Goebbels to July
Plotters General von Tresckow, Hans von Dohnanyi, Fabian von Schlabrendorff,
Wilhelm Canaris and Rudolf von Gersdorff.
Kerr’s historical notes at the end of each Gunther novel are also
fascinating, revealing the fates of the individuals he introduces as
characters.

In combining historical fiction with a hard-boiled detective
theme, Kerr takes the Bernie Gunther stories to a deeply satisfying level. Morally complex and ambiguous, entertaining
yet melancholy and revealing both the resilience of the human spirit and the
depths to which humans can sink, they are amongst my very favourite crime
novels. Best read in order, they are “must
reads” for any crime fiction or, indeed, historical fiction enthusiast and,
although his most recent books are not Bernie Gunther stories, I am counting the
slowly passing days until the return of Bernie, a deeply flawed but attractive
hero.

About Me

Lawyer, husband, father, voracious reader. During a mild bout of mid-life angst, I found out that, based on life expectancy of a British male and my average reading speed, I have only 2,606 more books to read before I expire. So I'm going to count them down and write about them.
As part of this plan, I intend to read the 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, using the 2008 edition as my base.